Humanities

Humanities

The humanities subjects – our intellectual heritage – help students and teachers alike to know about and critically question the world and how it has been understood so far. Humanities subjects at Addeys – Geography, History, Religious Education, Citizenship - help students engage with examples of the best thought and knowledge without which no education would be complete.

Our Approach

Imagine a silent world without thought and discussion (and new questions) and you have a world without the humanities subjects – and without human beings. Imagine a noisy world without silence and contemplation (and new answers) and you would still have a world without the humanities subjects. They are unpredictable and open-ended in terms of where they take the mind of our students, which is why they attract some of the most thoughtful young people to study them. The humanities subjects take the simplest questions we all have all the time – who, what, when, where, why, how - and try to answer them through engaging with the best geographical, historical, religious and political answers we have so far. Then we question our students to think through those answers and see if they agree – ultimately we aspire to help students think for themselves and even come up with new ways of looking at the world. In this way we hope as teachers to encourage humanities students to know and think critically about the questions that help make us educated – and who we want to be.